COMING OF ENGLISH AND DUTCH 213 



Even before the war, the Dutch had been a sea-going 

 people. An enormous herring fishery had created a fleet. 

 A very great trade developed with Lisbon in Oriental 

 goods. War with Spain stopped this trade with Lisbon, 

 but it also created a fleet that was able to go fighting 

 to India. Merchantmen in those days easily became 

 Dreadnoughts, and " turned a desperate land warfare Dutch 

 into a triumphant naval campaign." x They had two 

 thousand ships of war. Their captains had the reputation 

 of Sir Richard Grenville, and fought the fight of the 

 Revenge. "It is difficult," cried one of them, " not 

 to conquer on salt water. It is for us to tear from the 

 enemy's list of titles his arrogant appellation of Monarch 

 of the Ocean. Remember we are all sailors, accustomed 

 from our cradle to the Ocean, while yonder Spaniards 

 are mainly soldiers and landsmen, qualmish at the smell 

 of bilge water, and sickening at the roll of the waves." 1 

 Thus when Philip II. stopped the Dutch trade with the 

 Indies by way of Lisbon, Dutch traders knew how to act. 

 They would fight him, not merely in the European waters, 

 but in the Far East also. 



There were three possible ways to the East. There was The Dutch 

 the North-East route, which Mercator's map showed ^the East 

 to the North of Asia. The English had tried this route 

 and had failed. But Linschoten, who knew all that was 

 known about the Cape route, thought the North-East 

 would prove better. And he sailed in the two first of the 

 three Dutch voyages that were made in this direction in (i) by a 

 1 594, 1 595, and 1 596. They all failed ; but the failures were p^ s r sa g e ; as 

 made memorable by the stiff heroism of Barentz and his 

 men, and show " the intelligence, enthusiasm and tenacity 

 in wrestling against immense obstacles manifested by the 

 young Republic." l There were Dutch voyages by Drake's ( 2 ) by the 

 way through the Straits, and the voyagers saw further 

 evidence of the coast of Terra Australis. In 1599 Theodore 

 Gerards, being carried by tempest into 64, saw a country 

 mountainous and covered with snow, looking like Norway, 

 and seeming to extend to the Islands of Solomon. In 1624 

 1 Motley's Dutch Republic. 



